Teacher's Comments on Student Assisgnments

   Reading some of my peer's blogs, I would have to agree with Nicole with the fact that it has been sometimes hard to write some of these blogs considering I do not have my own classroom at the moment. It is kind of unrealistic in a sense to think of my "dream" classroom and what I would do in it. I don't know the kind of classroom I will have down the road let alone the kind of children that will fill it. So it is difficult to think of the different things that I would do with the children in my future classroom. However, as someone who has always been discouraged by the pen marks all over my paper, I found Sommers' article to be very appealing and something that I could relate with. Having experience with the topic, I could at least talk about what I would do in the future, based on the experiences that I have had as a student myself.

   Every time I would have a paper returned to me, whether it be in elementary school, high school, or college, I would always look at the amount of writing on the paper before actually reading the comments. I didn't read whether they were positive or negative comments, I just looked at the amount of red pen on my paper. I thought that if there was a lot of marks then that meant I did something wrong, which would make me upset and it made me feel like I was a poor writer. After reading the article by Sommers, however, I realized that not all comments are have to be negative and that teachers should have a balance of positive and negative comments. This way the teacher doesn't make the student feel like there writing isn't good enough and scare the student away from writing.

   As a future teacher, I don't want my students to feel the way that I would feel every time I would get a paper returned to me. I want my students to be able to benefit from the comments that I leave on their papers by making any changes that I may suggest to better their writing. However, I want to also make it a point to write positive comments on their papers as well. I don't ever want my students to get so discouraged with my comments on their papers that they are too nervous to hand in any pieces of writing in fear of what I will say to them. My goal as a teacher will be to create a balance of positive an negative comments so that my students will learn to enjoy writing instead of fearing it like I sometimes still do.

Sommers, N. (1982).  Responding to student writing. College Composition and

Communication, 33(2), 148-156.